Category:Others

I have to say that with the release of Up, Pixar shows that it still has the magic of turning good family stories into full-blown CGI masterpieces. Also, I think that Up is Pixar’s best film to date. It has a lot more heart in it than Monsters, Inc., action that can almost rival The Incredibles, and lovable characters like in WALL-E and Finding Nemo.

Some time ago, I came across a banner posted on an MMDA footbridge on the way to work. Instead of taking a photo, I decided to recreate the layout of the banner with the names changed to protect the guilty:

Unless you were quite oblivious, a partial solar eclipse happened last July 22. If you didn’t realize that an eclipse happened, I can’t blame you since a partial solar eclipse is far, far less spectacular than a total solar eclipse. The sun is far too bright that the moon obscuring only part of the sun’s disc will have no visible effect on the daylight. So, it’s quite easy to miss the fact that there was an eclipse unless you were clued in before.

That was pretty painless, withdrawing from my PayPal account to my BPI savings account, that is. And quite fast too! I initiated the withdrawal in PayPal last June 5, Sunday, and the amount was already credited to my BPI account by June 7. This is a far cry from the 5–7 days that PayPal indicated in their website.

We Filipinos (should) all know that the Philippine flag is unique in that it flies its flag upside down (with the red on top) when the country is in a state of war. Well, to celebrate the 111th declaration of Philippine Independence, listed below are a few other bits of trivia about our Three Stars and a Sun watawat that you probably don’t know.

I love sunsets, but it’s quite rare that I get to see one set in a beautiful location. I usually get off at work when it’s already nighttime and weekends are usually spent at home where the setting sun is blocked by residential homes. So it was quite a treat that I was at BoNa Coffee at San Miguel by the Bay (not at the branch in Westgate Alabang) last Monday and caught the sunset reflecting down Manila Bay.

Yes, a lot of people think MMDA and its chairman Bayani Fernando are already being silly (for example, read the misplaced pink fences that I blogged about in 2006). However, the photo to the right demonstrates what I personally think is MMDA taking its silliness to a whole new level—a silliness that is downright wrong and can be equated to producing educational textbooks riddled with errors.

My Christmas is starting to be pretty happy for me (notwithstanding all of the troubles and worries like the worldwide economic downturn), and I hope that you all feel the same as well. May God bless you, your family, and your friends. (And general well-wishing for those who believe in a different or no god at all.)

During the long weeks that our household had no DSL, I managed to survive by going to Internet cafes, using my—now useless—ümobile 3G connection, and staying at various free Wi-Fi hotspots. One of the places I frequented was the Westgate branch of BoNa Coffee located inside Filinvest Corporate City, Alabang. I first heard about BoNa Coffee when Rico and Sasha raved about BoNa’s original branch in BF Homes Parañaque. They then opened their second branch in Alabang and that’s the one I tried.

What is delicadeza? If you’re a Filipino holding a position of trust, power or responsibility, you should already know the answer. But otherwise, let me remind you. The term delicadeza is one of those Spanish loan words that has entered the Filipino vocabulary with a very specialized sense of meaning. In its original Spanish definition, it literally means gentleness, softness, delicacy (as in being delicate, not exotic food), and tactfulness. But in the Filipino culture, the term delicadeza means something else very specific and has no direct English translation; the closest would probably be “sense of propriety”. Essentially, it is the virtue of knowing and acting on what is proper when you are in a position of authority and trust, such as in public service.

The awards night of the 2008 Philippine Blog Awards rocked! The event, held last September 21 at the One Esplanade, was a much bigger, better, and brighter affair than last year’s award. For one thing, there were more categories and awards, and there are a lot of winners that I have never heard about. This goes to show that there’s been a lot of effort to be more inclusive.

This is the first time that I will participate in Janette Toral’s Top Ten Emerging Influential Blogs Writing Project. I found it actually quite hard to select the full slate of 10 entries. I’m quite discriminating with the blogs I read so selecting 10 new good blogs is kinda hard. Well, below is the list in no particular order.

I’ve heard good things about Avenue Q so I was determined to watch the Farewell Run of Atlantis’ production of this Tony Award-winning Broadway musical before the cast and crew perform in Singapore. Good thing that our former neighbor was able to snag some tickets and so me and my sister, our neighbor, and a couple of other friends got to watch Avenue Q last June 21. And what a blast it was!

My friend Imman got irritated with many of his friends praising the arrival of Firefox 3 so he decided to try the darned thing to see for himself what the hype is all about. He is already using Maxthon, a powerful tabbed-browsing shell to the Internet Explorer rendering engine. Read his assessment where he disses Firefox 3 out-of-the-box. He understands that Firefox can be extended in functionality but he prefers a powerful default browser (e.g., Maxthon has mouse gestures by default). And just like Firefox, Maxthon has a mature add-on community to further make Maxthon more powerful.

I got curious as to which Pinoy blogs have the highest traffic according to Alexa. While traffic is not the only important measurement of a blog’s worth (there is also number of feed subscribers, number of incoming links, Google PageRank, etc.) it is the metric most indicative of a blog’s potential profitability in terms of ad revenue (see my earlier post about online ads). Practically every advertising scheme on the Web relies on getting high traffic. An ad program that uses CPM (cost per mil [thousand]) is directly affected by traffic—every page view translates to a constant income. Even if the ad program uses the CTR metric (click-trough rate), the site’s ad revenue grows as traffic grows even if the CTR remains constant.

Let’s ignore the current ZTE-Lozada affair for awhile and go back to the previous national issue: the spat between ABS-CBN and GMA over the alleged tampering of AGB Nielsen’s TV ratings. While people are now drawing up lines and labeling themselves as “proudly Kapuso” or “team Kapamilya,” at the heart of the issue is the integrity of the TV ratings and how it drastically affects the earnings of TV networks which are mostly dependent on ad revenue.

I’d like to take this moment to give a big thank you to all of my subscribers for pushing my feed subscription count to more than 100! While 100 holds no candle to Anton’s 2,900+ or Abe’s 2,000+, I’m still chuffed to have reached this milestone in my blog, despite not actively encouraging casual readers to subscribe, and having no e-mail subscription (yet).

Ever since I got my camera, I have never used it to take pictures of fireworks. (And I haven’t gone to either of the two World Pyro Olympics as well.) So I took the opportunity to try the fireworks mode of my camera to take photos of the blossoming fiery flowers this New Year’s Eve. The result is quite pretty despite my trembling hands, and I think it would vastly improve with the aid of a tripod.

I really don’t watch local TV much anymore so I didn’t know that my blog entry on Erap the other day was mentioned in some news show last night. I had to learn about it from my officemate who, due to her surprise at hearing my name on TV (she was actually just listening, not watching), couldn’t remember what show or what channel it was. Hehehe.

Right about now, the Mad Dash contest is starting. This contest is a race between 24 two-person teams to visit 24 24-hour McDonald’s stores in Metro Manila in 24 hours on July 24 (7/24). The first team to do so wins a cool 240,000 pesos tax-free! The non-winning teams all get 1,000-peso gift certificates. And all you needed to qualify to join is a 150-peso single-receipt purchase.

I’m stating the obvious when some rumors, urban legends, and hoaxes keep getting passed on through e-mail, text messages, and blog posts despite the presence of sites like the Urban Legends Reference Pages that serve as a sort-of clearinghouse for things like this. (Even to this day, I occasionally get the Microsoft-AOL beta e-mail tracking system hoax that’s been going on since 1997.)

I read today a story of a mother who got separated from her family for 25 years. The mother lives in the Thai province of Narathiwat, just adjacent to Malaysia. In 1982, she got on a wrong bus going home from an excursion in Malaysia and ended up in Bangkok. Not being able to speak or read Thai, she boarded another bus and reached Chiang Mai, near Myanmar. She spent the next 5 years begging, and then two decades in a homeless shelter where no one is able to talk to her.

Obviously, I took the picture above while I was going almost 80 KPH on the road. Kids, don’t try this at home! (Or rather on the road, for that matter.) I took it because it shows all three dials pointing in roughly the same direction. I learned way before that in fourth gear, the speedometer and the tachometer move almost in synch. So it’s just a matter of having the gasoline tank full and driving at 80 to get this coincidence.

I miss the old parols I used to see in my childhood. Those handmade stars with paper tails in a fluffy circle. And lit with a bulb that gives off a warm incandescent glow. You don’t see them nowadays, since they’re replaced with electronic flashy ones that I’ll admit do serve to make the holidays bright and happy.

Some parishes have started to use LCD projectors instead of overhead projectors in their masses. They’re used to typically display lyrics to hymns, the responsorial Psalm, and almost the entire misalette in some cases.

As a follow-up to my earlier game, let’s have another one! Follow the thumbnail link below to see a special map of Metro Manila and Rizal. The map shows several roads and points of interest. While the selection may seem random, your job is to find out what place is missing from the map.

I forgot to blog about this two weeks ago, but I finally got to step into SM Mall of Asia three Saturdays ago. This is funny because I always pass by SMMoA whenever I go to and from work but I only got to visit it a few months after it opened. (The same thing happened with Ayala’s Market! Market!—I pass by it every working day but I only got in several months after it opened.)

Hmmm, let’s try something new on this blog. Shown below are five stanzas and your job is to try to discern what is the common thing among them. There are many true answers like, “these stanzas all have the letter e” or “these stanzas are all in English”, but the correct answer I am looking for is far less mundane.

Okay, it’s probably to be expected when you’re publishing things on the web, but I didn’t really think it will happen to me. I have found these two blog posts: plagiarism #1 and plagiarism #2. Both posts infringe on my copyright to this article.

I often hear this advertising line on the radio: “Kill double the monsters [like in Ragnarok] with double the speed… from 256 kbps to 512 kbps….” Yeah… and upgrading your 1 GHz PC to 2 GHz will let you type twice as fast. (Funny, the ad line stuck so much in my head that I can’t remember the DSL company behind the ad. So much for brand recognition.)

I’ve noticed that a few of the Metro Manila mayors have been on a binge of Atienzaism for the past year. Among them are Mr. Eusebio of Pasig, Mr. Trinidad of Pasay, and Mr. Bernabe of Parañaque. They, and a few others, have embarked on beautification projects in the same vein as Mr. Atienza’s Buhayin ang MayniLA flagship project. Granted that it’s not unusual to do a bit of beautification here and there, but they have seemed to embrace Atienza’s flair for extravagant projects.

I realized something when I was going home last night. On the end of the southbound side of Coastal Road there stands a line of MMDA pink fences separating the traffic between those vehicles headed towards Cavite and those pushing towards Las Piñas.

Ears were deafened due to the noise. Land transportation was halted due to dangerous fireworks. Air transportation was suspended, again because of fireworks and because visibility was down to 500 meters. Several fingers will be lost. A few people may get blinded. Despite the hard times, people seemed to want to compete in the World Pyro Olympics. It was a warzone out there.

If you’re observant, you might have noticed two distinct icons appearing before links in my posts. These serve as a visual indication on where the links go to. Links without icons are normal external links, that is, they link outside the blog. Links with a Roman ’W’ inside a square icon are external links to Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia is special since I frequently link to it. Finally, links with the v9 icon link to other pages within this blog, typically to other posts.

Call me insensitive but I can’t symphatize with the victims of both Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita especially with all the public hullabaloo over these two hurricanes and the local and federal response of the United States government. Granted, these two hurricanes were unprecedented in their impact on the United States, but hurricanes/typhoons are a fact of life for me and millions of other people.

It’s been there for weeks now, but woe to the driver who crosses the Pasig River southwards along EDSA at night. Notice the blindingly bright screen in front of Café Lupé? It’s far too bright. Besides, the white color is a little greenish-blue. This is not flattering at all to the advertisers that paid good money for their ads.

The Philippines has been widely touted as the “text capital of the world” for a few years now. You will hardly find any source on the web that will not mention the Philippines and its phenomenal volume of SMS. But I have been questioning this title recently.

I guess a lot of motorists in Metro Manila now know about the new ticketing system implemented by the MMDA centered on their Metropolitan Traffic Ticket (MTT). Now MMDA officers will no longer confiscate drivers’ licenses and drivers will no longer waste hours going to specific MMDA redemption centers to pay the fines and retrieve their licenses. Instead, drivers can pay their fines at any Metrobank branch within seven days of the ticket’s issuance.

Today was one day I wanted to go home early from the office. There was no friggin’ way I’m going to miss this week’s episode of The Amazing Race 5 where four teams are left racing in and around Manila.

If the UP Fighting Maroons get into the Final Four, I promise to watch their game live—something I have never done before. (That is, of course, if the game is on a Saturday and there are tickets left to buy!)

SEAVnews. At least 8 people died as heavy monsoon rains poured over Metro Manila and central and northern Luzon on Wednesday, August 25. PAGASA, the Philippines’ weather bureau, declared that Metro Manila has seen a record rainfall of 39 milliliters per hour when the average is 7.5 milliliters. Schools and government offices were closed as hundreds of families were evacuated from flooded areas. A landslide in San Mateo, Rizal buried a home leaving a four-year-old child missing and presumed dead.

I read with amusement the pamphlet entitled “Reasons why DLSU-Manila is the best choice for higher education.” I found this pamphlet in the DLSU application package that my fourth-year-high-school sister brought home. Naturally, I wondered what reasons could La Salle have to claim that they are the “best choice” as opposed to UP Diliman and Ateneo de Manila.

So I stumbled onto this weird game after reading a thread at our UP EEE ’98 YahooGroup. The initial e-mail pointed to a Flash version of the game. People replying to the e-mail thread were frustrated until, one by one, they figured it out.